


Scratches

by Paratti



Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: Angel Book of Days Challenge, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-11-03
Updated: 2003-11-03
Packaged: 2017-10-30 14:30:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/332783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Paratti/pseuds/Paratti
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Timeline ~ Up to S4, Calvary.<br/>Summary: What happened to Lilah between Habeas Corpses and Calvary?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Scratches

**Author's Note:**

  * For [laure (ladyoneill)](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=laure+%28ladyoneill%29).



> Author's notes ~ Dedication: to Lori for the beta, and so much more.

#### SCRATCHES

 

Lilah Morgan does not turn tail and run from anything or anyone. She makes strategic withdrawals to regroup, fight back and above all, win. She might have a still bleeding gut wound and have been left alone in a sewer with instructions to go into hiding and change her name, but she's Lilah Morgan and that just isn't her. If it were, she'd have long since been eaten alive by Wolfram and Hart - and not just metaphorically. She hasn't been; she's fought her way up the greasy pole, scratching, biting and winning all the way. That is not going to change now.

She's going to get that thing that forced her out of what's hers, all of it. She's going to get her power back and she's going to get her man, in that order. She's a lawyer; knowledge is power. It's going to tell her how to silence the fat lady, and that's the one thing her man can't resist. She's going to get him and to do that she's got to keep going, to get out of the sewer and back into the world, where she can fight back and win.

Though sometimes she wishes that she'd bought the whole suit of armour, not just the helmet. It would have seriously come in useful in that conference room. It might be the day of reckoning, but she could do without the wound that just won't stop fucking bleeding. The drying blood itches and she wants to scratch it, but knows that will only make things worse. Lilah's heartily sick of things getting worse.

She wants her life back. She wants her pretty things, the ability to have whatever she wants, the absolute buzz of being a player in the great cosmic game, and she wants Wesley. She's pulled herself up to a position of power and influence, made herself into a woman that can take and make a man like Wes. The small town girl she started as could never have had or done any of that. She's fought too hard to get it, lost too much getting there, taken too much and too many to stop now, and she'll be damned if she's going back to what she was, even if she could stop.

Actually, she can't. She is damned. Signed sealed and delivered, with an elegant swipe of a Mont Blanc pen filled with her heart's blood. There is no escape clause. It's not ultra vires; she was competent to sign it. The terms and conditions were clear. She knew in advance what her fate is, if and when this wound kills her, and she remains willing to pay the price. She got what she wanted. Her mom's got the best care that money and power can provide. She got everything she never had growing up, and if she has to burn in hell for it, she will, and she won't start whining now, even if the prospect of hell's closer now that it was this morning - a lot closer.

She's not sure she can get as far as home on foot as she is, and her keys, phone, gun, well everything basically, are left behind in a locked-down slaughterhouse. She's not going back there, even if she could get in, so she thinks of available options as she forces one foot up the steel ladder at a time, daggers shooting through her with each climb upwards. Pushing the cover off nearly kills her, but nothing and no-one gets to do that, not even her.

She's used to fires. She's lived in L.A. for years, and fall means fires. The acrid scent of fire on the Santa Ana wind is an old and beautiful friend. She's always been drawn to the fires, such beautiful destructive power. But this year, maybe the last year, the inferno seems everywhere. The rain of fire has fallen like leaves. They're scattered as far as she can see, way too many to be crunched out. The smoke scratches in her throat, the fumes irritate her eyes, and the sirens go off everywhere, which is really annoying as her head's still swimming.

The city is burning, and it's spreading as the fires and the demons consume the firemen. There's Networks with reporter and cameramen vacancies as she sees both CNN and KTLA5 eaten up by the story of their lives. Where the fires aren't, there are vampires, and human scum, and one wounded woman is a tempting morsel for all of them. Her gun is gone, she's no slayer and she's bleeding. It's maybe five blocks to the nearest possible help, and she uses another of her nine lives life getting there, when vamps smell the blood on her. She's lucky, some kids walk into the pack, letting her get away while they bleed harder than she is. Lilah has had far better days.

Luisa Morales, it turns out has had a worse one. Her assistant with the 'off sick' habit won't need the termination order Lilah's been contemplating; the Beast's done the job for her - messily, very messily.

But on the upside, once she's got the blood cleaned off, Luisa's cell-phone survived, along with the numbers for field ops, the main supernatural suppliers and the liaisons to the main demon clients, which is all that really matters. Lilah's far from stupid, so she calls field ops to send a security detachment to Luisa's apartment before she hits the bathroom. She needs them; the door's kindling and the doorman's in too many pieces to be of any help whatsoever. Armed with the clothes in from the laundry basket, since the contents of the closet are far too splattered to be usable, she changes into something a little less face-first-in-a-sewer. She raids the bathroom cabinet, pops some pills, cleans the wound, gritting her teeth against the pain, and manages to get a bandage on it before passing out on the floor from the agony.

Next thing she knows, there's a team of five men, heavily armed with both guns and stakes, looming over her and looking more petrified than Wolfram and Hart wet-works men should be capable of. The biggest pulls her to her feet and the pain in her gut threatens to send her back into the land of peaceful unconsciousness, but Lilah's tough and she fights to stay aware. The next words motivate her even more. If they've lost the main safe houses, the rest of the staff that were off sick and the other wet-works team already, she's even more fucked than she thought she was.

She's right.

She's no sooner got a gun in her hand than the Beast crashes back into the apartment. The bastard thing reeks of burnt blood, and it takes the black guy the big guy pushes towards it while he and the others pull her towards the fire escape. Lilah's not going to be able to forget the sound of the head cracking soon, no matter if she gets to her pills or not.

Then they're running down the fire escape, each clang setting up a matching beat of pain from her gut to her brain. It's only adrenaline that's keeping her going and she's never been so happy in her life to see an SUV. She's thrown into the back while the others pile in and they speed off.

From there, it's a living nightmare, crossed with one of the Hollywood action flicks that Wolfram and Hart makes fortunes from. She loses a field op at each stop. Trying the remaining safe house costs the cute blond one, but does give her time to contact the most powerful clients representatives. The Pikali provide her with enough time and safety to touch base with the best information suppliers on the supernatural in the tri-state area. Though long term client relations are almost certainly fucked by the Beast dropping through the roof, killing the guy with the rough tattoos across his hands who made her skin crawl as well as the spawn laid once every twenty years. Can't win 'em all.

Winning anything would be good. She's shot it repeatedly. She's tried exploding bullets, seen RPG's, machine guns, the stingers of the Pikali, swords by their servants all used on it and nothing fucking works. But it's only when the sun goes out that she really starts to feel panic.

She doesn't give into it. She wouldn't be her, or still alive if she did. She uses the time constructively to make the deals, tries to contact the other branches, call in reinforcements. She's pretty sure that the apocalypse might well be over by the time those reinforcements can get to L.A. but she knows she's pleased the Senior Partners by still being on top of the job despite the circumstances. Maybe she'll get a better class of torture in Hell, or a cushy desk job. It's a nice thought.

It helps keep her going when the shaman summoning her books detects something even stranger than the loss of the sun, the loss of a vampire's soul. How the hell the bastard could get a happy as the world falls to pieces she doesn't know, and she can't help a frisson of what she thinks may be fear sliding down her spine.

She knows what fear is when the Beast stomps into the shop, passing mystical barriers that should shred anything evil to pieces. She has time to see it shake its head very slowly at the shaman before ripping her lungs out. The quiet chain-smoker with the kevlar habit is next. She's had experience at not making mistakes around mystical shit. The big lug Schaffer clearly hasn't, as he crosses a barrier un-breached by the Beast and gets torn to shreds across seven different dimensions. The distraction gives Lilah time to run and she does.

She feels like she's in Alias, on really, really bad drugs. It's her guilty pleasure, as she loves SpyMommy, and she does after all have a British hottie of her own, only hers is on the wrong side and temporarily awol. A girl can't have everything. Of course, right now she'd settle for something, anything really.

The keys to the SUV are scattered across the dimensional walls, the phone's out of power, the safe-houses are compromised, and the clients willing to help are dead. All the LA staff seem to be dead, many completely, and she's run out of field ops. Adding insult to injury, with the sun going out, the town's become a vampire playground and she's still bleeding.

So she goes underground.

She loses track of time. It seems like she's been in this toilet forever. It's cold, and it's damp, the cold tiles offer no comfort, and she just can't stop fucking bleeding. She wants to be anywhere but here. She wants to be somewhere that's more her, somewhere with the best linens money can buy, freshly squeezed o.j., bacon, pancakes and maple syrup, not water that tastes foul, no food and just thin, dirty clothes for warmth.

The side of Lilah that she'll never admit to a living soul, unless she shoots them afterwards, wants something she shouldn't. She'd sell her soul, if it wasn't already too late, to be somewhere nice right now. Somewhere with her man, who loves her. Somewhere which still has the sun, somewhere stylish, somewhere beautiful. Tuscany, sunlight radiating warmth from the stones while she sips her wine, eats her antipasti and flirts with the waiter, making Wes furious enough to spank her later. New England in the Fall, stomping on the leaves crushing them underfoot like she did as a child, and watching the leaves turn the colours she loves on Wes. He's a Fall, and she loves dressing him. The russets, burnt golds and purples that bring out his eyes and hair - all the pretty things. All the warmth and colour that's gone from the world ahead of the acceptable schedule. Everything she wants back, and if she can't have it back, she wants payback for.

Memories of ripping those beautiful, expensive shirts she buys him make her feel warmer, so she sinks further into them. Tying his wrists together with the Armani tie he refused to wear. Spanking him with the Mulberry belt for being a bad, bad boy. The taste of him in her mouth when she scratches his inner thighs. The bone melting orgasm from the contrast of that brilliant tongue on her while his stubble scratches at hers. How that fine-grained skin marks so prettily under her nails and teeth. The peat and smoke from the finest malt in those kisses. Lilah really doesn't have the strength left to indulge in memory, but she's beginning to lose hope and it's all she does have to cling to.

She knows that he left her, that he doesn't think he should want her, thinks he should want the Twig, want some abstract concept of 'good' that's ultimately meaningless, but it doesn't help. She loves him, despite all the rules of Being Evil, all the rules of common sense that the inner ruthless pragmatist that's got her this far pretty much intact insists on. But right now, she's lost everything, everyone - mom being long gone in mind if not in body - and it hurts. There's tears that really wants to come out, but she won't let them. She can't. If she starts now she'll lose herself, lose Lilah Morgan, and if she does that, revenge, survival itself, none of it will matter a damn, let alone be possible.

So she doesn't cry. She bends over the book, forces herself to hunch over it, forces the pain to the physical, and uses it to concentrate, to think, to let the agony keep her awake, alert, and so not let that thing get her in her sleep. The book cost her her bodyguards, left her exposed to the Beast, stuck in her own personal idea of hell before her completion date. The book has to be worth it. She's not going to see the deal come out with her as the sucker. She doesn't do sucker.

Except with him. With him, she's the schmuck. The worst thing is that she knows it. She let him see her hurt, let him see her, let him in, and that's just unforgivable. Unfortunately, it's too late; she loves him. She wants to be with him, needs to see him; wants to make sure the idiot hasn't got himself killed fighting this thing or, even worse, saving Angel. She tells herself it's that she doesn't know enough to use the book, or nothing in it is useful, that it's time to move on to a new plan. She tells herself that maybe Angelus can do something against the Beast. Everything else seems to have failed - so why not? It's all rationalisations, all the logical arguments of a mind that tired, that's seen everything from negotiation, through hand grenades to automatic weapons all bounce off the big rock, and is quite simply running out of options. Her mind tells her why she's going, but it's her traitor heart that has the deciding vote, and even if she tries to repress it, it's what leads her to go to the hotel.

She always knew her heart would kill her. It's why she's spent years keeping it under control. She hates failing.

She hates having Wes see her reduced to hiding in a filthy toilet even more.

But she can't resist going back with him. She's needed. She has something of power that might just get the job done. And he wants her there. It's all she really does need. Plus, getting out of the bathroom from hell is a definite bonus.

Angel without the toy surprise is a lot more appealing, if not exactly what the Senior Partners want. The cheerleader's got even more preachy and annoying, and that's something she didn't think could get worse. The kid still needs a haircut and a dissection. The black guy has potential she has to remember to mention if she ever gets out of this in one piece. She has plans for the Twig.

It hurts. It shouldn't. She shouldn't let it hurt; seeing her man make puppy eyes at the skinny bitch. But he is, and it does. Of course, once she knows about her and Wes, it's obvious that Wes stands no chance. That helps. It doesn't mean that she's shelved those plans, but it helps.

As does having him come up to her room to see her.

He's brought bandages, giving her the means to help herself if she won't let him touch it. It's a strange relationship. It's been a strange summer and it's an even stranger fall, in every sense of the word, for both of them. She wishes many things, but she makes do with the situation as it is, not the fantasy of the perfect New England Fall.

She lets her fingers do the walking across his shoulders as he's facing her, standing so very close. "It's not always about holding hands, lover."

"You're hurt." The way Wes closes his eyes so very slowly when he's hurting breaks the heart she'll deny to anyone that she has. But Wes has torn his way into that heart as surely as the Beast's claw did her gut, and it's just as painful.

"It's not the first time." She can't help the pain cracking into her voice. She's kicking herself for letting herself be so damned fucking vulnerable to this man, for letting him in again, but she can't help it. She needs him. She wants him, and by all the lords of hell, she's going to have him if it kills her. Of course since she still can't stop the bleeding, it might just do that.

"No," Wes sighs into her hair.

"A condemned woman gets a last meal." The way he looks into her eyes kills her.

"You'd know all about that." His tone, combined with the fingers caressing her nipples, tells her three things at once. He's still stuck on his Good/Evil ne'er the twain shall meet shit. He wants to fuck her senseless on this bed, whether she'd stuck to him with her own blood or not. And that he won't do it.

"I usually get them off," she purrs, fingers caressing his cock through the fabric.

"I know," Wes rumbles.

"So, do I get my stay of execution?" His lips are so close she can almost taste them.

She can see him tempted, so very, very tempted, and it feels wonderful. She is going to get him back. This is going to work out. The stupid vision will work out. The idiot vampire will get his soul back. Somehow Wes and her, they'll bring back the sun, get things on track for the proper apocalypse. The reinforcements from the other branches will come through and the whole damn branch will be hers. She'll have the killer office, and she'll have to kow-tow to no-one outside the Senior Partners. She was wrong to give up, think they were all going to die in the hopeless fight against this thing. It will all work, and it's all starting with a kiss.

Except it doesn't. "Later, Lilah. We're needed downstairs to help put Angel's soul back. We'll have time to talk later."

She often wonders what he would have said.


End file.
